Healthcare social media spotlight: How to get more Twitter followers

If you're looking to grow your healthcare social media presence, Twitter is a tool to consider. The tweets you share could help you reach key consumers in your community, and they could help you promote your providers, your services and your events.

Sounds exciting, right?

To achieve Twitter success, you'll need to start with one key item: An audience. Let's talk about what you need to do to get more followers.

Five tips for gaining Twitter followers

1. Promote your Twitter account on your healthcare website.

This is an easy win. If your organization is actively using Twitter, make your account easy to find on your website.

Think about the amount of times people visit your site to get things done. Each visit is an opportunity to get your Twitter account noticed, clicked on and followed. After all, your visitors already know who you are. They may already like what you're doing. Showing your account to your fans gives them an opportunity to deepen your connection.

2. Post consistently.

There's no magic number of tweets you should post each day, week or month. (Sorry!) That can vary depending on your community. Maybe your readers want to hear from you once a week. Maybe they need more.

The only way to know for sure is to experiment and track your results. Soon you'll find a sweet spot between the work that goes into posting and the results you get from each post.

What not to do is clear, however: Don't let large amounts of time lapse between your posts. You want your account to look like a hot spot of interactivity—not a silent space. First-time visitors who see an account with big gaps between posts may be unlikely to follow, because they can see it's not worthwhile.

3. Use hashtags wisely.

You're probably thinking, "Hold on: Don't hashtags boost visibility? And don't we need visibility to gain followers?" The answer to that question probably merits its own blog post, but let's cover a few best practices now.

First off, do your due diligence. A hashtag that sounds relevant might end up connecting your post to things that you'd rather not connect with. (Think: scandals.) Never throw a hashtag on your post without searching for that hashtag and checking out the content—and the writers—associated with it.

Can't find a world-wide hashtag you love? Go local instead. Find out what your community is talking about, and the tags your community is using, and try those tags.

One good idea: Use local tags to promote your local events. The right tag could encourage participants to engage with you on Twitter. And that engagement could prompt your participants' followers to follow you too.

And when in doubt, do some tests. Try creating a couple posts with the same overarching topic, such as pregnancy. Post them at the same time on the same day of different weeks. Assign a hashtag to one and leave it off the other. When you look at the results, did one post have more engagement than the other?

4. Follow other organizations and influencers.

Following others will boost your visibility on Twitter. And yes, the right visibility can help you gain followers. Just be sure to evaluate the Twitter presence of whomever you're considering before you hit the follow button. Remember: The people you follow can have an impact on your brand, so choose wisely.

Try to think outside of the box too. Not everyone you follow has to be involved in healthcare. Local charities, city government and professional groups in your community could be great options.

5. Like and comment on other posts.

This part of the job gets easy—once you've discovered who else you should be following.

Engaging with other organizations' posts can help create a symbiotic relationship. The organizations you follow might be more likely to comment and like your posts when you interact with theirs. This is important because the more likes, comments and retweets your post gets, the better chance it has at surfacing in a Twitter user's timeline.

Social media content matters too

When it comes to gaining followers, following these tips can help. But posting content that readers actually want to read: That's of vital importance. We can help. We specialize in creating content that's engaging, and our new Coffey Social tool makes sharing that content a snap. Contact us for a demonstration. We'd love to tell you more.